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1 To what degree are Croatian and Serbian the same language? Evidence from a Translation Study* John Frederick Bailyn Stony Brook University 1. Introduction The purpose of this article is to argue, on the basis of the comparison of purely grammatical building-blocks, exposed through a particular kind of experimental study, that the (standard) languages referred to as Croatian and Serbian are the same language, and should be acknowledged and treated as such. 1 (I assume further, that if this point can be demonstrated for Croatian and Serbian, the argument extends directly to what are now being called Bosnian and Montenegrin.) A central assumption behind this claim, and behind the entire article, is that the question of linguistic identity can be discussed within the realm of structural/formal linguistics and need not be (only) defined with regard to culture, ethnicity, nationality or politics, despite common sociolinguistic assumptions to the contrary, such as that of Langston & Peti-Stantić (2003), who state that it is not possible to define what constitutes a language as opposed to a variant or dialect in terms of the inherent features of the language variety itself. (L&P-S 2003, p. 249). The claim of this article is that it is possible to do so, by comparison of the grammatical building-blocks of the language variants in question, whose similarity (or in this case nearidentity) can be exposed by experimental methods. 2 This results will show that Croatian and Serbian are for all intents and purposes linguistically identical. This view contradicts much common lore about these two languages. There are two common narratives surrounding the historical and current status of Croatian and Serbian, both of *This paper is dedicated to my teachers of then Serbo-Croatian, Wayles Browne and Milorad Radovanović, with the explicit caveat that they are in no way responsible for the contents here, except insofar as they both inspired me to study and continue studying BCS and to visit then Yugoslavia in 1989 and current Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia many times since. I am grateful to participants at the Language & Human Rights Conference at Stony Brook University s Humanities Institute in 2006, as well as to Steven Franks and several anonymous reviewers for invaluable discussion. The article would not have been possible without Danijela Lugarić and her students from the University of Zagreb who sparked the original debate in St. Petersburg in 2006 that inspired the study. Thanks to all the Zagreb students who participated in the translation study. Thanks to Ivana Mitrović and Dijana Jelača for help with the original texts, and to Dijana Jelača for much needed moral support. All mistakes are my own. 1 By standard I mean only the contemporary language norms in the two countries as opposed to Croatian and Serbian being defined as anything spoken by Croats and Serbs respectively. I do not mean a literary standard (see discussion below), nor do I adopt Crystal s 1997 definition of a standard language, namely, a particular variety of a language that has prestige within a speech community (emphasis by an anonymous reveiwer). Because standardization of variants has led to claims of linguistic identity and then to claims of linguistic distinctness, contemporary language norms are as good a place as any to examine the purported differences. If we find linguistic identity in these variants, the point will have been made more generally namely that cultural/ethnic/national identity is not isomorphic with linguistic uniqueness. 2 I will use the term variants as a neutral designation for the linguistic systems that are generally referred to as Croatian, Serbian and so on. I will sometimes use the term Western variant for what is popularly known as (standard) Croatian and Eastern variant for is known as (standard) Serbian, by way of acknowledging that those distinctions among the variants that exist do not correlate either with national groupings or with political structure. See Alexander 2006 for discussion.

2 -2- which are based on non-linguistic criteria in defining the relevant languages as distinct. One story is that the formerly unified language Serbo-Croatian disintegrated into successor languages in the 1990s, as the Serbo-Croatian speaking areas of Yugoslavia broke apart into the countries of Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and Serbia & Montenegro, (and now include Montenegro (and Kosovo)). The successor languages -- Croatian and Serbian (as well as Bosnian/Bosniak and now Montenegrin)) then acquired their rightful status as independent languages once their nations had gained independent status (Greenberg 2004, Alexander 2006). The other story is that two distinct languages existed before their joint standardization in the 19 th and 20 th century as Serbo-Croatian. Until the 1990s, they were artificially combined into the language of Serbo-Croatian, and after Yugoslav disintegration were able to regain their former status as independent languages (Langston & Peti-Stantić 2003). A common view of the recent emergence of successor languages is revealed by a reviewer of this article who states that what is clear is that as of Serbo-Croatian officially ceased to exist in the Yugoslav successor states. All sides agreed that the unified language was to be jettisoned and probably never again to be resurrected. However, examination in this article of the grammatical building blocks of the variants, exposed by experimental methods, determine that official declarations and the desire to jettison a unified language do not make its demise a fact, as the same reviewer reveals in the statement that there are no scholars who claim that Croatian and Serbian are two distinct languages from a formal linguistic point of view. It is this formal linguistic point of view that is emphasized in the Translation Study I report on in this article. 3 It is important to note that while it may is obviously true for some linguists that Croatian and Serbian are the same language, (see, for example Kordić 2005, 2006, 2008), it is also the case that for many linguists, the opposite appears obvious. Thus Langston & Peti-Stantić (2003) state that on the basis of both the historical development and the current political realities, there can be no doubt that they should be treated as separate languages. (L&P-S 2003, p. 249, emphasis mine). This article is intended both to inject doubt (back) into the discussion, as well as to question the notion that modality ( X should be treated as Y ) is appropriate in discussions of the identity of linguistic systems. Naturally, much of this depends on the definitions involved, a point to which I return immediately below. The issue is very emotional for many people -- it is associated with the complex ethnic, social and political history of the former Yugoslavia and its violent break-up in the 1990s, its previous legacy as a unified state, complex language standardization processes (Peti-Stantić 2008), and the cultural and national identities of the successor states, which are naturally intimately intertwined with linguistic identity. I propose stepping away from the emotional and socio-political issues as much as possible and looking at the linguistic systems themselves. The translation study reported here allows us to do exactly that. 3 The issue of the name of this single language is far from trivial. I will use BCS (standing for Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian), simply because other possible English names for the common language (especially Serbo-Croatian ) have complex historical and political connotations that cloud the debate and raise many non-linguistic issues. As Alexander (2006) discusses, the use of BCS is convenient, easy to pronounce, as politically neutral as possible, the 3 letters are arranged in alphabetical order, and it does not force one to take a stand on the complex issue of Bosnian vs. Bosniak (despite the term BCS not being used (or even known) within the BCS speaking areas, where the names hrvatski, sprski and bosanski/bošnjački, in addition to naš jezik ( our language ) are most common.) See Alexander 2006, chs for important discussion.

3 -3- Linguists and others speaking out in favor of the identity of the two variants have generally relied on two points of commonality: 1) Two traditional criteria in favor of the claim of a common language: a. mutual intelligibility b. sharing of a common (literary) standard Mutual intelligibility, of course, is something that is naturally subjective, and also depends on factors such as exposure to common media sources, political unity or disunity, and so on. That it should not be relied upon as decisive in the case of BCS is true both for those who believe that (standard) Croatian and (standard) Serbian are distinct languages, and for those who believe they are essentially the same. Thus Langston & Peti-Stantić (2003) note that although mutual intelligibility intuitively would seem to offer an unambiguous criterion for determining whether two speech varieties represent the same or different languages, intelligibility is actually a relative and to some extent subjective feature; studies have shown that speakers evaluations of intelligibility may be subject to social and political pressures (L&P-S 2003, p. 275, fn. 6). And, as Alexander (2006) puts it, this criterion [mutual intelligibility] is also imprecise, and largely dependent not only on perception but also on emotion (and, to an extent, on the educational level of the speakers). objective linguists may decide that two speech systems clearly represent the same language; yet if speakers of these two systems are sufficiently convinced by external factors that they will not be able to understand each other, then that will usually turn out to be the case, and the speakers in question will claim that they are speaking different languages. (Alexander 2006, p. 401) Mutual intelligibility arguments also fail to be definitive because they are impossible to quantify. Surveys have been done about impressions of mutual intelligibility, but it is not possible to quantify the effect in a way that could tease apart intelligibility due to sharing a single linguistic system compared to mutual intelligibility due to years of sharing media and other cultural sources of discourse. Thus the argument of mutual intelligibility is typically convincing only to those who believe independently that there is a single language at issue, but unconvincing to those who feel otherwise. That being said, there is no doubt of the near 100% mututal intelligibility of (standard) Croatian and (standard) Serbian, as is obvious from the ability of all groups to enjoy each others films, TV and sports broadcasts, newspapers, rock lyrics etc. 4 The issue of sharing a common (literary) standard has also been used to motivate positing a single Serbo-Croatian language (see discussion in Greenberg 2004) (as well as to motivate positing distinct languages now). The existence of a common set of literary documents at various historical periods solidified the perceived unity of Serbo-Croatian. The counter-argument here has been that insofar as there ever was a common Serbo-Croatian language, it was artificially created, and therefore in some sense never truly existed. This argument could be used to distinguish the BCS case from many language variants that fail the mutual intelligibility test (Arabic variants, North Italian variants, Chinese variants, and so on), but which are nevertheless often regarded as one language because of the generally-accepted existence of a common literary 4 In this regard, it is often pointed out that Czech and Slovak also show a high rate of mutual intelligibility, but are linguistically distinct languages (as a a parallel translation study would quickly reveal). Thus the fact of mutual intelligibility is difficult to raise to the level of linguistic evidence in favor of linguistic identity, especially because of the confounding factor that if the two were distinct languages, political and cultural reality could easily explain why all speakers of one understand all speakers of the other so easily.

4 -4- standard. In the case of post-yugoslav Croatian or Serbian (or Bosnian or Montenegrin), this objection is at times coupled with the claim that the Serbo-Croatian literary standard was based on one of the groups local variant. Thus the claimed existence of a Serbo-Croatian literary standard as motivation for the claim of a single language now, for example, could be said to prolong the Serbianization of the language(s) under the Novi Sad Agreement of 1954 (and perhaps earlier, depending on the version of the claim), although as Greenberg (2004) shows, this claim distorts the historical situation considerably. 5 In fact, the initial unification movements of the 19 th century under Vuk Karadžić for the Serbs and Ljudevit Gaj for the Croatians were attempts to unify dialects that cut across ethnic and religious lines into a common language. Compromises were made as to which dialect to choose as the source of a common standard. The štokavian ijekavian dialect took on this role, with the result that most BCS speakers speak a modern version of the štokavian dialect. (See Greenberg 2004 and Alexander 2006 for descriptive histories.) 6 As for the current dialectal situation, neither the older dialect divisions into Štokavski vs. Čakavski vs. Kajkavski nor the later subdivision into Ekavski vs. Ijekavski vs. Ikavski correspond geographically to the major religious, cultural and political boundaries. (Browne &Alt 2004, p. 9) What I want to do in this article, then, is simply to provide grammatical evidence that BCS remains a single language, based in part on structural comparison of the internal linguistic levels of Phonology, Morphology and Syntax (or linguistic building-blocks ), but primarily on the results of a Translation Study from Serbian into Croatian, which casts strong doubt on the idea that Croatian and Serbian are distinct languages. The lexical distinctions that do exist come nowhere near to reaching the level of distinguishing the two languages, especially given the essentially identical nature of the entire grammatical system. The structure of the article is as follows: First, I present the Single Language Hypothesis, to be used in what follows. In Part 2, I describe a pilot Translation Study conducted in In Part 3, I present results from the Translation Study, supplemented by comparative description, that strongly support the identity claim for BCS. In Part 4, I discuss the important issue of lexical differences, which is often used to support the claim of distinct languages, and show that even in this aspect of language, the Single Language Hypothesis is supported. 5 The claim of the artificiality of the earlier common standard is a strange argument in the sense that all (literary) standards are to a certain degree artificial or arbitrary language is in a constant state of flux and change, and dialectal and regional variation is a reality of all language communities. Crucially, there is no biological or natural basis for any literary language, whereas what generative linguists refer to as Ilanguage is considered to be part of the natural world, and can therefore be studied using methodology generally accepted in the natural sciences (Chomsky 1981, 1995, 2005). The I-language view would take every speaker to have a distinct internalized linguistic system (an idiolect), determined by the complex mapping of linguistic data available during acquisition onto innate structures. Sharing the same language reduces to degree of overlap of the resulting idiolects. I do not adopt the extreme generativist position that no two grammars are ever the same, but I do assume an essential distinction between the internalized linguistic knowledge of native speakers, a natural phenomenon, and literary standards, which are cultural creations, albeit important ones. 6 As Bugarski (2004) points out, the 19 th century unification was not without inconsistencies at that time: Although in essence a single system structurally, it still displayed non-negligible differences in script and orthography, in points of pronunciation and grammar, and especially in lexicon. The latter points are well-known; the former point, of it already being a single system structurally, is the historical basis for the natural unity of the current BCS system that this articles exposes through a Translation study.

5 -5- (2) provides the definition of linguistic identity I will work with: 2) The Single Language Hypothesis: (SLH) The degree to which 2 language varieties can be considered the same linguistic system correlates with the degree to which their building-blocks are the same, that is, the degree to which their internal linguistic systems employ the same grammatical components. Grammatical components relevant to the SLH in the case of BCS are given in (3): 3) Grammatical Components relevant to the SLH: a. Phonology: the same phonemic inventory b. Morphology i. Derivational Morphology: identical derivational morphological devices for the same kinds of derivations ii. Inflectional Morphology: identical distinctly represented morphological categories (case, number, gender for nominals; person, number and tense for verbal categories, etc.) identical form of the actual bits of inflectional morphological for the same inflectional categories c. Syntax: identical settings of major syntactic parameters d. Lexicon -- degree of identity in: i. lexical categories (N, V, Adj and their combinatory requirements case, selection, etc) ii. functional/grammatical categories (P, C, D, Neg, T, adverb, ) iii. functional/grammatical combinations (PP temporal and special modifiers; verbal government, selection, etc.) In what follows I will show that the Single Language Hypothesis is strongly upheld for BCS. To test the Single Language Hypothesis for BCS, a Translation Study was undertaken in the Summer of 2008 (see below). Results of the Translation Study corroborate the descriptive fact that there are practically no significant differences between Croatian and Serbian with regard to any aspect of (3)a (phonology), (3)b (morphology), and (3)c (syntax). As for (3)d (the lexicon), we will see that although Croatian and Serbian are well-known to differ to a certain degree with regard to the first part of (3)di, that is, there are certainly quite a few instances of distinct lexical terms for identical concepts or notions, the % of such variation is relatively small, as we will see from the Translation Study. More importantly, we will also see that the second part of (3)di, namely what requirements particular lexical items make on the elements they combine with, are practically identical. Finally, and crucially for the maintenance of the Single Language Hypothesis, we will see that the other major component of the lexicon, namely the functional/grammatical markers of the language (3)dii, are for all intents and purposes identical, as are their required combinatorics (3)diii. Given the near-identical nature of the entire internal linguistic system, it could be argued that the relevance of the lexical items that do differ between Croatian and Serbian for mutual understanding is reduced considerably, since the grammatical frames in which the differing lexical items find themselves more than compensate for the lexical distinctions themselves, in ways that are absent when we are in fact dealing with distinct linguistic systems, even those as similar as Czech and Slovak.

6 -6-2. The Translation Study In order to test the extent to which Croatian and Serbian have distinct linguistic systems, a pilot Translation Study was conducted in 2008 with 16 adult native speakers of the Croatian variant of BCS. The speakers were all from the Croatian capital Zagreb, and 15 of them ranged in age from 20-38, (with the 16 th being a 55-year-old). 7 All speakers except one were born and educated entirely in Croatia; all completed high school in Croatia and attended or currently attend the University of Zagreb. The group consisted of 11 women and 5 men. The subjects were asked to translate 9 short texts from Serbian into Croatian. The texts themselves were taken from various registers and sources, in the Eastern Ekavian variant spoken in Serbia. The texts were checked with adult Serbian speakers from Novi Sad to verify their authenticity. 8 4) List of texts used: number theme source length 1 local educational news item internet 129 words 2 personal monologue blog 176 words 3 literary text Milovan Glisic, Redak Zver 166 words 4 baggage instructions airline website 106 words 5 technology instructions server 87 words 6 political news (Zimbabwe) internet 90 words 7 recipe cooking website 95 words 8 a story (priča) unknown 147 words 9 sports news internet 68 words total: 1,064 words The Croatian subjects were given the texts (in Latin alphabet) and asked to translate them into Croatian as closely as possible, without avoiding any opportunity to show a distinction between the original and the translation. The distinctions were emphasized in the directions to the subjects deliberately, so that those results showing identical or near-identical forms could be reliably considered indicators of true identity. Results will be presented for each area of language as we move forward through the various linguistic levels. 9 7 A reviewer asks about the relatively small size of the group. Naturally, more data, and a bi-directional study of translations would reveal more. However, this study still involved over 17,000 words (across all participants) across a range of registers. 8 A reviewer observes that the texts do not cover scientific or government/political styles, which (s)he claims would show more differences. However, a survey of the website of the government of Bosnia & Herzegovina (http://www.fbihvlada.gov.ba), which is presented in 3 varieties, shows a remarkable convergence in all areas of language, including lexicon. Clearly a larger study, covering a wider range of texts, would be of interest in determining which styles of the different varieties show more or less lexical distinctions, especially if it included translations in both directions. 9 A systematic survey of attitudes toward the issue of Croatian and Serbian language was not conducted with these speakers. However the younger speakers (9 of the 16 are in their 20s) all came into the study determined that it would support their strong conviction of Croatian and Serbian as distinct languages.

7 -7-3. One Linguistic System An examination of all the major levels of language show that BCS is clearly a single language with a single grammatical system. In this section I briefly review the relevant levels and discuss any apparent distinctions between the purported different languages, referring to the Translation Study where relevant to provide empirical support Phonology The Eastern and Western variants of BCS have the identical set of phonemic distinctions. The vowel system consists of the following phonemes: 5) BCS Vowel Phonemes (all variants): /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/ The consonant system consists of the following 25 phonemes: 6) BCS Consonant Phonemes (all variants): /r/, /v/, /j/, /l/, /lj/, /m/, /n/, /nj/, /f/, /s/, /z/, /š/, /ž/, /h/, /dj/, /dž / /c/, /č/, /ć/, /b/, /p/, /d/, /t/, /g/, /k/ This is not to say that the variants do not show some systematic distinctions. As is well-known, the three major štokavian sub-dialects Ekavian, Ikavian and Ijekavian, are so-named for how the older Slavic vowel jat /ĕ/ developed in the modern version of the variants. The Croatian subjects in the Translation Study all replaced Serbian /e/ stemming from historical /ĕ/ with the appropriate combination, either /-ije/ or /je/. This is shown in (7): 10 7) Translation Study: cognate words in Text 1, showing Serbian /e/ Croatian /ije/ or /je/ Text Original Translation # of occurrences Comments 1 primenjenih primijenjenih 64 of 64 4 instances in text 1 1 umetnosti / umjetnosti 48 of 48 3 instances in text 1 umetnika umjetnika 1 obeležavanja obilježavanja 32 of 32 two changes here 1 najuspešnijim najuspješnijim 16 of 16 1 odseka odsjeka 16 of 16 totals: 176 of 176 Crucially, these systematic distinctions do not introduce any phonemes that are not present in the other variants. The only relevant phonemes in these variant forms are /e/, /i/ and /j/, all of which exist independently in all variants. /ĕ/ itself has been lost in all modern BCS variants, replaced 10 (7) only shows the results for Text 1. I do not provide the statistics for the same phenomenon from the other texts. It is clear from the absolute 100% rendition of these instances of Serbian /e/ into Croatian /je/ or /ije/, that the correspondence is systematic. In what follows, I will also use samples of the 9 texts to make the relevant points rather than providing the data from all of them on every point of comparison.

8 -8- either by /e/, /i/, or a combination of /j/ and the two remaining vowels. 11 Furthermore, the modern variation described above does not correlate with Serbian and Croatian in a direct way. Serbian spoken in Serbia itself is mostly, but not entirely Ekavian. 12 It is true, however, that there are a few other systematic phonological distinctions between Western and Eastern variants with regard to other phonological issues beyond the modern-day representation of the older jat phoneme. There is partly systematic variation between western /h/ and Eastern /v/ in cases such as the following: 8) Eastern /v/ vs. Western /h/ in some lexical items: English Eastern Western tobacco duvan duhan to cook kuvati kuhati dry suvo suho deaf gluvo gluho Thus in Text 2 and Text 7, the masculine adjective suvi dry, appear, in the context suvih informacija ( dry pieces of information ) in Text 2 and suvi vrat ( dry pork ) in Text 7. All 16 Croatian speakers translated this as suhih and suhi, just as above. However, Text 2 also contains 24 other instances of the phoneme /v/, and Text 7 contains 15 other instances of /v/, all of which are rendered as /v/ by all of the Croatian subjects. The same goes for /h/, which is found 13 times in the Text 2 and twice in Text 7 and remains as /h/ in the translations in all cases where the same lexical item is used, except for 1 the lone instance being the word for chemistry -- hemija in the Serbian original, translated as kemija by all 16 Croatian speakers. Therefore we must conclude that cases such as suvi~suhi (and hemija~kemija) are lexically specified, and do not represent any phonemic distinction with regard either to Eastern /v/ or Western /h/. One more note about phonology. Browne & Alt 2004 contains 90 pages of linguistic description of the various levels of BCS, covering a wide range of complex phonological processes. In none of these cases, (with the minor exception of the ability of Western vs. Eastern speakers to discern tonal distinctions that are no longer a distinctive part of the phonological system), are any dialectal issues even mentioned (because there are none of relevance). A short example of the complexity and uniformity of one such situation should suffice: The BCS "old jotation" resulting from the Proto-Slavic jotation is: (1) labials add lj, thus p-plj, b-blj, m-mlj, v-vlj ; the newer sound f also becomes flj. (2) s, z alternate with š, ž. (3) t, d alternate with ć, đ. (4) k, g, h alternate with č, ž, š ; as in the first palatalization's reflex, c has also come to alternate with č. (5) l, n alternate with lj, nj. (6) r and other consonants (palatals of various sorts, also the group št) are unaffected. (Browne & Alt 2004, p. 18) 11 Greenberg (2004) and Browne & Alt (2004) identify one dialect in the West of Serbia that appears to have a vowel between /i/ and /e/ as a development of former /ĕ/, in addition to /i/ and /e/. However this potentially real phonemic distinction does not constitute a difference between standard Croatian and standard Serbian. The 2 variants have identical phonemic systems. 12 Bosnian and Croatian Serbs primarily speak Ijekavian, and attempts by the nationalist Bosnian Serb leadership during the 1990s to impose Ekavian on the local Serbs did not succeed, and was abandoned as an official project in 1998 (Bugarski 2004, Greenberg 2004).

9 -9- It is well-known that Slavic jotation systems are extremely complex. The paragraph quoted here succinctly summarizes what BCS has inherited from Proto-Slavic in one such instance. (No other Slavic language has anything like the same set of realizations, due to differences in the phonological histories). Half a dozen developments of this sort are described in detail in Browne & Alt In any instances where there are dialectal distinctions, they are described as well. However no dialectal variations are mentioned here, because there are none. Clearly, if Croatian and Serbian had distinct developments in areas of the phonology such as these, we might be able to support the claim that the phonological systems were distinct to some degree. However, this is not the case the phonological systems are essentially identical in this and all other similar regards. This strongly supports the Single Language Hypothesis Morphology Derivational Morphology Derivational morphology is practically identical in the Eastern and Western variants of BCS. A good example of this identity is found in the derivation of perfective/imperfective verb pairs. As in other Slavic languages, there exists a complex set of possible morphological relations between perfective and imperfective verb pairs. In some cases, it is a matter of simple prefixation, where the perfective form surfaces with a prefix that is absent in the imperfective form (pisati~napisati to write ). Another device is the use of suppletive stems in imperfective and perfective pairs such as nalaziti~naći ( to find ). Finally, there are derivational morphological devices such as infixation/suffixation, as in kupovati~kupiti ( to buy ) and vowel alternations, such as zatvarati~zatvoriti ( to close ). (See Browne & Alt 2004 for exact descriptions.) If the Western and Eastern variants had truly diverged to the point of being distinct linguistic systems, one might expect each to have developed distinct ways of deriving (at least some of their) imperfective/perfective pairs. Such a distinct development would indeed cause a significant ripple effect across the derivational morphology of the language, including affecting nominalizations and other areas of vocabulary expansion, and in its interaction with the lexicon, it is not difficult to imagine this leading rather quickly to the advent of truly distinct verbal systems, and eventually even to a lack of full mutual intelligibility. After all, although the various Slavic languages share tendencies in their system of imperfective derivation, they are all quite different systems, and each requires a unique grammatical description. One such description suffices for all of the BCS variants exactly because they follow identical rules of derivational morphology. If the behavior of imperfective derivation were in any way exceptional in this regard we could perhaps maintain a case for distinct linguistic systems. But in area after area of the derivational morphology, we find the same level of identity and no need to even discuss regional variation, for the most part. Nominalization is another area of derivational morphology where there is no indication of any difference at all in how the process works among any of the BCS variants all nominalize verbs productively (far more productively than Russian does, for example), using the suffix nje (pisanje writing from pisati to write ). Croatian and Serbian are identical in this regard. No changes in this regard are found in the translations. As with the phonological systems, there are some minor areas of semi-productive distinctions in the derivational morphology systems. For example, in verbs based on foreign borrowings, Western variants tends to use the formative suffix /-irati/, whereas Eastern variants

10 -10- use /-ovati/. At the same time, the final form below shows that even this pattern is not productive. This is shown in (9): 9) Semi-productive distinctions in formatives with borrowed roots: English Bosnian Croatian Serbian to organize organizirati organizovati organizirati organizovati to construct konstruisati?konstruirati konstruirati konstruisati But: to analyze analizirati analizirati analizirati Some of these distinctions come up in the Translation Study, Thus in Text 2, 15 of the 16 Croatian speakers render the original form reprodukujemo ( we reproduce ) from reprodukovati as reproducirati ( to reproduce ). 13 (The 16th speaker provided a distinct lexical item ponoviti to repeat ). This essentially conforms to what is shown in (9) above, with the minor caveat that the foreign root ending /k/ is transformed by the Croatian speakers into /c/ before the /ir/ suffix, in keeping with standard velar palatalization rules. However, it should be noted that this distinction relates only to borrowed words that surface as verbs, and does not interfere with other derivational processes (all such verbs can nominalize as discussed above), or with verbal conjugation, or other inflectional processes. Thus we can conclude that the system of derivational morphology supports the Single Language Hypothesis Inflectional Morphology In what follows, I will discuss the practically identical nature of every instance of inflectional morphology across the BCS variants. In discussing inflectional morphology, it is useful to first categorize the inflectional distinctions represented by the language (a potential source of variation), and then the actual morphophonemic manifestations of the various inflectional morphemes. As we will see, there is almost no variation here of any kind, and this is central to the Single Language Hypothesis Morphological Categories Browne & Alt (2004) present the overall BCS system as follows: 13 Note that the conjugated vs. infinitival forms here are the result of the verb being in a subordinate clause, which typically show conjugated form vs. infinitival variation. See section on syntax, below. 14 A reviewer expresses surprise that this discussion need to be included in the article at all, because the dialectal basis [of the two variants] is the same. However, this same reviewer maintains the position that the two variants correspond to distinct languages. The paradoxical view emerges from that review that the dialect is the same but the languages differ. Clearly, terminology is at issue here. This reviewer is in agreement with the basic claims of this article about linguistic building blocks, while at the same time relying on a purely sociological definition of language, in the absence of a purely linguistic definition. We therefore appear only to differ on the definition of language for which I rely on the Single Language Hypothesis as opposed to extra-linguistic criteria. Under other definitions, of course, other conclusions are possible.

11 -11- BCS distinguishes masculine, neuter and feminine genders in singular and plural; the 2/3/4 form opposes masculine-neuter to feminine. There are three main sets of caseand-number endings or declension types. One has -o, -e or zero in the nominative singular and -a in the genitive singular. It includes most masculine and all neuter nouns. A second has nominative singular - a, genitive -e. It contains most feminine nouns and small classes of masculines. The third type ends in zero in nominative singular, -i in genitive. It includes all feminines apart from a-stems. (p. 28) Needless to say, this statement holds in its entirety for both Croatian and Serbian. A full list of distinctions in inflectional morphology made (in all BCS variants) is given in (10): 10) Categories expressed by BCS inflection: a. Nominal: i. Case: Nom, Gen, Dat, Acc, Instr, Loc, Voc ii. Number: Sg, Paucal, Pl iii. Gender: M, F, N iv. Class b. Adjectival i. Attributive: Concord with modified N for Nominal categories listed in (10)ai-iii ii. Short vs. Long form morphology in Masc. Sg. Nom A s to express definiteness iii. Predicate adjectives: Number (Sg. Paucal, Pl); Gender (M,F,N) c. Verbal: i. Person: 1 st, 2 nd, 3rd ii. Number: Sg, (Paucal), Pl iii. Tense: Pres, Past, Future (compound form), Aorist, (Imperfect) iv. Aspect: Pf, Impf v. Other: Imperative, participial, subjunctive (morphologically identical with past tense) Practically none of this inventory differs among variants. 15 The Translation Study shows remarkable uniformity of morphological form between the two variants. Case endings are the same, predicate agreement is the same, concord is the same, verbal endings are the same, and so on. In verbal categories, there were sporadic instances of changed prefixes, naliti ( to pour ) changing to doliti ( to pour ) for 2 of the 16 Croatian speakers in both instances in Text 7, and for another 2 speakers in one instance but not the other. The vast majority of verbal prefixes remained unchanged It is true, as Greenberg (2004) points out, that there are some southern Serbian dialects that are losing case distinctions, presumably under the influence of Macedonian and Bulgarian, and as such represent transitional variants to those distinct languages. Of course, this occurs naturally in many contact areas, and does not provide any support to the notion that the Eastern and Western variants themselves contain any significant difference on this score. 16 One minor point of variation concerns the 3 rd sg copular form je/jest. As Browne & Alt (2004) point out: the 3rd person singular is jest in the Croatian standard, jeste in Serbian, both in Bosnian, but all standards use the expression to jest 'that is, i.e.' In asking a question with li, the 3rd person singular is Je li. (Browne & Alt 2004, p. 49). However, it should be noted that all dialects use jeste in short answers and emphatic contexts, and all use je in reduced and unstressed contexts.

12 -12- The only instances of a minor change in morphological sub-category of nominals between the Serbian originals and Croatian translations involved nouns that show a declension class switch, which in most cases also involved a change in gender. (Note that all the feminine nouns shown here are declension Class I, and all the masculines are Class II, except vezista in the original text which is a Class I masculine, a small but well-attested category.) 11) All instances of declension class and/or gender switch (5 words total (over all 9 texts) out of 269 nouns, 4,304 tokens): Text # English Original Translation # of tokens rate of change 1 criterion kriterijum (m) kriterija (f) 16 of % 1 asst professor docent (m) docentica (f) 2 of % 3 half po (m) pola (f) 30 of % 5 luggage prtljag (m) prtljaga (f) 80 of % 9 signalman vezista (Class I) vezist (Class II) 8 of 16 50% total: (these 5 items) 136 of % total: (all items) 136 of 4, % Thus we see systematic gender variation in only 3 nouns out of 269 and partial variation in 2 others. The vast majority remain identical in the translations Inflectional Morphophonemics It is clearly the case that Croatian and Serbian share the same set of morphological category distinctions. But are there any significant divergences in what forms are used to represent the different categories, that is, is there evidence that, for example, the Genitive case forms for Croatian speakers are different from those for Serbian speakers? Here, we turn again to the Translation Study. I base the results presented here about inflectional morphology on the translations of Text #3. 12) Inflectional morphemes found in Text #3: types occurrences tokens differences convergence (in text 3) (in translations) (# tokens) rate (%) Nominal endings (1 type) 99.28% Verbal endings % Total ,329 6 (1 type) 99.55% The rate of convergence is over 99%. In fact, there is only one instance in Text 3 of any change in the output of inflectional morphology: There are two instances of the masculine Accusative animate adjective form og in the original text. This occurs after the preposition za ( for ) which takes Accusative. The original of Text 3 has the phrases za jednog ( for one [Englishman] ) and za drugog ( for another [Englishman] ). 2 of the 16 translations change og to oga in the first instance and 4 of them change it to oga in the second instance. Thus the total number of changes from og to oga is 6 out of 32. However, it is not clear at all that this represents even a distinction between variants so much as a register distinction. The two forms are considered acceptable in all variants to such a degree that standard textbooks list the endings as og(a). The

13 -13- same holds for other adjectival endings that are polysyllabic, such as dative om(e) and plural im(a). No other instances of morpho-phonemic change are found in any other nominal forms, and no adjectival or verbal forms show any variant in inflectional morphology of any kind. The SLH is strongly supported in this most crucial of building-blocks, the productive inflectional morphology. The significance of this overwhelming identity in inflectional morphophonemics cannot be overemphasized. Croatian and Serbian (and Bosnian and Montenegrin) share 99% of morphological categories expressed overtly and 99% of the specific morphophonemic forms. Under conditions of 99%+ identity of morphological devices and forms, a much higher level of lexical variation is possible than otherwise. The grammatical frame and context in which lexical items find themselves is identical. Culturally-carried meanings of words may vary by national culture, but the internalized computational system that allow us to put them together into larger meanings is the same. Lexical distinctions of up to 25 or 30% of the entire non-grammatical lexicon might be expected to be easily tolerated in this situation and the Single Language Hypothesis would still lead us to take seriously the idea that the variants in question are a single language. In the BCS case things are much clearer than that, for as we will see, the lexical distinctions make up at most 7% of the open-class lexicon and under 1% of the functional/grammatical (closed-class) lexicon Syntax With regard to the major parameters by which languages differ from each other syntactically (Chomsky 1981), all variants of BCS share identical settings in practically all instances. The one well-known syntactic difference between Eastern and Western variants (da + present tense verbs (Eastern) vs. Infinitival constructions (Western)) will be discussed below after an overview of essential parameter settings. In this section, I discuss some aspects of syntax hat are not reflected in the texts simply to exemplify the unified system of BCS syntax Parameter settings In the following chart, I show the BCS parameter setting for 7 major aspects of syntax (for discussion of these and many other syntactic issues, see Rudin 1988, Franks 1995, Bošković 2001, 2002, Browne & Alt 2004, Alexander 2006, Bailyn 2007 and references therein). In none of these areas, do we find any difference between the Western and Eastern variants. 13) Some major parameter settings for BCS: Parameter Croatian Serbian variation? Multiple WH-fronting + + none Superiority in multiple WH - - none Pro-drop (dropping of pronoun subjects) + + none svoj required for 3 rd person subjects + + none Subject condition on anaphor binding + + none Availability of long-distance antecedent + + none Clitics in second position + + none

14 -14- In fact, there are only two areas of syntax where any variation was found in the Translation Study one is well-known -- da clauses vs. infinitives, and the other less known the choice of pronominal vs. reflexive possessive adjectives. 17 Let us begin with the latter: Binding differences The translations show various instances of a second person possessive pronoun tvoj/tvoja/tvoji or vaš/vaša/vaši ( your ) being replaced in the translation by the reflexive possessive pronoun svoj/svoja/svoji ( self s ). Examples are given in (14): 14) 2 nd person possessive pronouns vs. reflexive possessives: a. Text 2 (original): Jedanput kada to shvatite na dobrom ste putu da ostvarite vaše snove. Once when that catch on good aux-2pl path that realize your dreams Once you understand that, you are on the way to realize your dreams. b. translations: da ostvarite vaše snove (non-reflexive: 9 of 16) that realize your dreams... da ostvarite svoje snove (reflexive: 7 of 16) that realize self's dreams 15) 2 nd person possessive pronouns vs reflexive possessives: a. Text 5 (original): možete ostati bez vaših privatnih poruka can-2pl remain without your private messages you could end up without your private letters b. translations: bez vaših privatnih poruka (non-reflexive: 8 of 15) without your private messages... bez svojih privatnih poruka (reflexive: 7 of 15) without self s private messages 16) 1st person (plural) possessive pronoun vs reflexive possessive: a. Text 2 (original): da nas osposobe da realizujemo naše snove that us help that realize our dreams to help us realize our dreams. 17 Alexander (2006) gives examples the placement of second position clitics varying between Croatian and Serbian speakers. Such variation was not found in the Translation Study, but this issue requires further experimental studies specifically designed wit constructions of this kind in mind.

15 -15- b. translations: da realizujemo/ naše snove (non-reflexive: 9 of 13) 18 ostvarimo/ that realize our dreams... da realizujemo/-iramo svoje snove (reflexive: 4 of 16) ostvarimo/ that realize self's dreams Thus it seems that there is a slight preference for the reflexive possessive pronoun to replace the personal reflexive pronoun in about half of the possible cases. However, it remains unclear to what degree this is a matter of construction choice (see discussion below on lexical variation) or a true syntactic difference between the Eastern and Western variants. If it can be shown that there is real complementary distribution here, that is that the Eastern (original) variants disallow the use of svoj in the constructions showing vaš and that the Western (translated) versions only allow svoj, then we might be dealing with a true syntactic difference. In 3 texts, the Eastern variant original shows 5 instances of the reflexive pronoun svoj twice in Text 1, twice in Text 4 and once in Text 8 and these instances of svoj are translated as svoj in 100% of cases. This result cuts both ways. That is, on the one hand it clearly shows that the Eastern variant uses the reflexive possessive regularly, and that it would be too strong to say it is an element only used or favored by the Western variant. On the other hand, the fact that there are 0% of changes in the direction of reflexive non-reflexive, whereas we have a fairly high percentage of changes from non-reflexive reflexive may or may not represent some sort of syntactic difference between the two variants. As a reviewer points out, a follow-up study with translations from Croatian into Serbian might illuminate this issue Infinitives and da-clauses The best-known syntactic distinction between Eastern and Western variants of BCS concerns the tendency in the East to prefer tensed complement clauses with da and in the West to prefer infinitives, whenever possible. Typical examples are given in (17): 17) Variation in control clauses (from Text 2) a. Eastern b. Western (15 of 16) zašto... treba da znam zašto... trebam znati why need-imps that know-1sg why need-1sg know-infin why I need to know why I need to know c. Eastern d. Western (5 of 16) preferiraju da nas zatrpaju preferiraju nas zatrpati prefer that us overwhelm-3pl prefer-3pl us overwhelm-infin [they prefer] that they overwhelm us [they prefer] to overwhelm us 18 3 of the 16 translations employed non-verbal constructions in this second clause that exclude the possibility of reflexive because of the lack of a subject antecedent. I therefore did not count these cases as instance of non-reflexive, since no reflexive option is grammatically available here.

16 -16- Interestingly, only 5 of the 16 speakers transformed the clause in (17)c into an infinitival clause of the kind shown in (17)d, despite the complete availability of the infinitival alternate. This indicates that we are most likely dealing with a matter of construction choice rather than a real parametric syntactic distinction. Serbian speakers are perfectly comfortable with both variants, and it appears from the high numbers of Croatian translations that maintained the da+ tensed verb clauses in the translations, that their grammars also allow both constructions. That the Western variant does not disallow the da + tensed V clauses, despite the common lore to the opposite, is seen in cases where for independent reasons the infinitival clause is unavailable. 18) Cases where infinitival replacement is not possible: (from Text 2) a. Original (Eastern) da nas osposobe da realizujemo naše snove that us make possible that realize-1pl our dreams that make it possible for us to realize our dreams b. Translation (Western) da nas osposobe da realiziramo naše snove that us make possible that realize-1pl our dreams that make it possible for us to realize our dreams (14 out of 16 instances x 2 da clauses) (There is a standard ovati ~ -irati distinction in the verb to realize, see above.) Both da + conjugated verb clauses are maintained in the translation, because there is no viable (verbal) alternative. In an effort to avoid the da clause, some Croatian speakers paraphrased the entire constriction with a nominalized verb in a prepositional phrase for the second da clause. Most made no changes, however (14 of 16), because of the lack of a syntactic infinitival option. I therefore maintain that the best-known instance of an apparent syntactic distinction between variants is nothing more than case of preference for one available construction over the other, Indeed, Miskeljin (2005) states that for every Serbian da-clause, an infinitival variant exists that is preferred in Western variants, though both are grammatical in both. In fact, however, there is one instance of infinitival clauses that are notoriously absent in all variants of BCS, despite their full availability in other Slavic languages. These involve object control structures, such as English (19) (subject control cases are given for comparison) 19) Subject control in English: a. Mary wants to go. b. Jovan is trying to sleep. 20) Object control in English: a. The generals ordered Jovan to go b. The generals convinced Mary to stop 21) Subject control in BCS: (Eastern variant: da + conjugated verb) a. Marija hoće da ide Marija wants-3sg that go-3sg Marija wants to go

17 -17- b. Jovan pokušava da spava Jovan tries-3sg that sleep-3sg She wants to go 22) Subject control in BCS: (Western variant: Infinitive) a. (ona) hoće ići wants-3sg to go-infin She wants to go b. Jovan pokušava spavati Jovan tries-3sg sleep-infin She wants to go = 23) Object control in BCS: (da + conjugated verb only: all variants!) a. Naredili su mu da ide ordered aux him that go- They ordered him to go. b. *Naredili su mu ići (infinitive construction ungrammatical: all variants!) ordered aux him go-infin They ordered him to go. These examples show that there are syntactic constraints on the Western infinitival constructions that rule out the possibility of most infinitival object control sentences in BCS in any variant, despite their availability in many related languages. 19 An explanation of this gap in the BCS paradigm is beyond the scope of this article. But there is strong agreement among all BCS speakers that (23)b is ungrammatical (including those that will always choose an infinitival construction over a da + verb construction in every instances when it is possible.) This fact show several important things about this purported syntactic distinction first, the infinitival variants are more restricted than in most other languages with infinitives. Second, Serbian and Croatian speakers share the same judgments about this unusual restriction, a similarity far more intriguing and potentially important than the differences in construction choice that speakers make. Third, the difference between the two variants in this area cannot be reduced to a parameter, whereas the similarity (when its underlying nature is discovered) presumably can. 19 Browne & Alt (2004, p. 75) note that in Croatian two verbs permit an infinitive to refer to their object: 'teach' and 'help' and give the following examples: i) Učio sam ga plivati. 'I taught him to swim.' ii) Pomogli smo mu graditi kuću. 'We helped him to build a house.' These are the exceptions that prove the rule. As B&A note, what remains good in all standards is: iii) Pomogli smo mu da gradi kuću. 'We helped him that he build a house.

18 Lexical Differences and Similarities In this section, I discuss the issue of the lexicon with regard to the often heard claim that this is the area where the two variants are the most distinct, and that this qualifies them for separate language status. The Translation Study results show that the percentage of such lexical variation is relatively small, even in the open-class categories. This is especially true in the closed lexical classes, or the so-called functional categories, where we will see that the two variants are identical. It is only in the open classes that we find variation, and given the absolute identity of the rest of the entire grammatical systems, these differences, many of which may simple be a matter of preference, are also insignificant. It should be noted that a far wider set of lexical distinctions can be commonly found across dialects considered the same language. 4.1 Functional (closed-class) Categories To call the two variants similar is to completely understate the situation with regard to the functional categories of the language. Consider the statistics from the Translation Study. The 9 original translation texts contain the following breakdown of lexical and functional elements: 24) Parts of speech in the 9 translation texts: category class type total # of # of tokens # of instances # of tokens instances translated changed changed noun open 269 4, main verb open 144 2, adjective open 99 1, adverb semi-open 68 1, preposition closed 87 1, determiner closed auxiliary closed conjunction closed complementizer closed WH-phrases closed particle closed negation closed clitics (pron) closed pronouns (full) closed totals: , (3.91%) 411(2.65%) The open-class categories (noun, main verb and adjective) are discussed below. Of the other categories, including adverbs, the only functional category that shows any semi-systematic variation is the feminine 3 rd person possessive pronoun njen- which is translated by the Croatian speakers in 11 of 32 instances as njezin-. 20 This represents a mere 1.61% of all determiners and 20 There are scattered individual cases of changes that appear to be neither systematic, nor exclusive for the speakers at hand. Thus although the vast majority of instances (13 of 16) involving Eastern posle ( after ) are rendered as poslije, with the standard Ijekavian change, 3 speakers translate it as nakon ( after ). Similarly, in Text 8, the phrase po ispadanju ( after relegation ), and po is also translated as

19 -19- it occurs in less than half of the tokens where njen- appears in the original (11 of 32). Overall, then, determiners are changed 1.11% of the time. No other grammatical or functional elements show any alternations at all between the originals and the translations. That represents a total of 11 individual changes out of the total number of functional/grammatical category tokens of 7,648 (0.21%). Or, to put it the other way, functional and grammatical lexical items in the original Serbian texts remain identical after translation into Croatian in 99.79% of cases. Clearly, the Single Language Hypothesis is strongly supported Lexical Categories The results of the Translation Study in the realm of lexical distinctions in the open class lexical categories (noun, verb and adjective) are quite important in evaluating the one possible area in which the Single Language Hypothesis is not overwhelmingly obvious. Here is the distribution of open class lexical differences brought out in the Translation Study: 25) Open class categories in the 9 translation texts: category total # of total # # of instances % of instances # of tokens # of tokens instances tokens changed changed changed changed noun 269 4, % % main verb 144 2, % % adjective 99 1, % % Nouns show the highest percentage of lexical difference between the Serbian originals and the Croatian translation 8.92%. This means that 8.92% of all 269 noun occurrences in the 9 texts were in some translation or other translated with an entirely lexically unrelated word. However, the fact that only 5.81% of all tokens of those nouns (across the 16 translations) were changed shows that even of the 24 nouns that showed a lexical difference, not all were systematically changed in the Croatian translations, though some were. In fact, of the 24 nouns. 9 verbs and 4 adjectives that showed non-cognate lexical distinctions, only 8 nouns, 5 verbs and 2 adjectives were treated systematically as different by a high percentage of the 16 translations (here I have included all of those for which 10 or more of the 16 translations agreed on the lexical distinction). The other lexical items that showed distinctions showed them in fewer than 10 of the translations. It is also notable that of the 990 words that appear in the 9 texts (which constitute 15,840 word tokens, across the 16 translations) there were only two instances in which the translator said that s/he did not know a word in the original texts. That is a knowledge rate of the original nakon by 5 of 16 speakers, though the other 11 maintain po. However, this is not included in the cases above because it is sporadic, and also because the form nakon is in standard usage in Eastern dialects as well. Naturally, we would need further research to determine whether instances of nakon in original Eastern texts would remain as nakon, showing a tendency toward replacing posle with nakon, or whether those forms might also be translated as poslije, which would support then idea that some speakers make conscious (or not so conscious) changes whenever two interchangeable forms are available (see Alexander 2006, chs. 22 and 26 of discussion of such tendencies). There is no evidence in the case of posle~nakon that the issue is even one of dialectal variation. Further research on specific tendencies with these kinds of alternations is required.

20 -20- words of 15,838 out of 15,840 tokens, or 99.9%. Still, passive recognition could be possible of words from neighboring language with significant language contact. But the extremely low rate of overall lexical change, and the absolute lack of such distinctions in the closed-class vocabulary is strong evidence that the Single Language Hypothesis applies clearly in this case, more clearly than in cases of variants of a common written language whose spoken version have indeed diverged to be on the edge between language and dialect. The BCS lexicon contains practically no linguistic evidence of there being a case to be made for distinct language status. Furthermore, as discussed in Section 3, given the inflectional nature of the language and the near 100% identity in both derivational and inflectional morphology, the minor lexical variation that exists can almost always be determined by context modifiers are the same, idioms mostly the same, syntactic and morphological frames in which open-class words find themselves will be almost always identical. Under these circumstances, determining the meaning of an unfamiliar word is not unlike what we experience in childhood as we learn words in our native language at an amazing rate we determine its possible range of meanings from its grammatical (and real world) context and within 2 or 3 occurrences of the word, we are able to situate it in our conceptual world. With the absolute identity of the closed-class vocabulary and inflectional morphology, even a far higher rate of lexical distinctions would not have any significant effect on separating the variants into 2 separate languages. 5. Conclusion Since Chomsky 1957, it has become more and more clear that what we know when we know a language is a set of building-blocks and rules of combination, some universal and some language-specific, which allow us to create an infinite variety of novel sentences and utterances. The infinite possibilities our finite system gives us is one of the great sources of creativity in the human species. This view sees language as part of the natural world. Internalized language systems are the natural and unique result of the salient features of the speech to which each generation of children is exposed mapped onto the linguistic component of the mind. Internalized linguistic systems change naturally over time, and dialects evolve into distinct languages regularly, but slowly. The idea that the variants of a language could dissolve into distinct languages in a 10-year period is excluded by everything linguists have discovered about language change since the 19 th century and before. Distinct literary standards are a different story, and here readers are referred to Peti-Stantić (2008) and other specialists on processes of language standardization, literary norms and so on. On appropriate definitions of language, of course, one could (and many people have) come to the opposite conclusion about Croatian and Serbian they could be (and have been) defined simply as the language of the Croatian people and the language of the Serbian people, respectively. The Croatian and Serbian nations and people have distinct cultural identities, so it is natural to associate each with a distinct language. The tendency to define nationhood and cultural identity through language goes back at least as far as Dante (Fishman 1999, Joseph 2006). The view that distinct peoples in distinct countries speak distinct languages, (a correlation that is often absent in the world -- many countries have multiple local languages and some languages span many countries and peoples), is often supported by reference to regional distinctions among these languages in pronunciation, grammar, and especially in vocabulary (lexicon). We have seen that such linguistic distinctions are essentially absent in the case of Croatian and Serbian. Thus a crucial consequence of the findings of the study reported here is a

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